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Highlands Today

Resource Officers Provide More Than Security

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

From left: School resource officers Brian Giguere and Veronica Osborne look over the critical incident response plan Wednesday morning at Sebring High School.

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By JOE SEELIG

Highlands Today

Published: August 14, 2008

SEBRING - Students will be returning to school Monday and staff is busy preparing for the big day, including its two school resource officers with the Highlands County Sheriff's Office stationed at Sebring High School.

Deputies Brian Giguere (pronounced jig-air) and Veronica "Roni" Osborne both agreed on Wednesday, they are psyched and ready to receive the approximate 1,649 bolting Blue Streaks headed their way.

"Both of us are looking forward to Monday," Osborne said.

Osborne, 47, has been a deputy with the Highlands County Sheriff's Office for 14 years and this is the start of her third year as a school resource officer. Her first two years were spent at Lake Placid High School.

Her boss, Sgt. Monica Sauls, felt she would be more effective at Sebring High School.

"Sgt. Sauls thought having a male and a female here might be the best way to go," Osborne said. "There are twice as many students here than at Lake Placid."

With 856 males enrolled and 793 females in Sebring High, that calculates out to be a handful.

"I can handle the female portion here better than with two males," Osborne figured.

Giguere, who is 39, has been in law enforcement since 1993 when he worked as a part-time police officer in Rhode Island. He went to full-time status when he joined a police department in Oklahoma - as a school resource officer - and was hired in 2000 by former Sheriff Howard Godwin.

He worked as a school resource officer for two and a half years at Hill-Gustat Middle School and worked the last school year with Sgt. Manuel "Manny" Gonzalez at Sebring High, who showed him the ropes there.

Wearing Many Hats

"We wear multiple hats," Giguere said. "Our primary function is to keep the students and staff safe."

SROs, as they are called, talk with students, encouraging them to stay in school. They find them help when they have a problem, and they counsel them about and against the use of narcotics, and more recently, about prescription and over-the-counter medications.

They monitor them when they're in the lunch room.

With two lunch shifts that means 800 students are at or near the cafeteria at a time.

Both Giguere and Osborne went over their critical response plan Wednesday.

"It tells us, the sheriff's office, where everything is, all the gas valves, the utilities for all of the schools in the county," Osborne said, as she and Giguere went over a color-coded map of the school. The information contained within the plan is confidential.

That information can also be useful when the school is forced to go into lockdown mode.

"Our function is we notify our supervisor and she comes here and we help coordinate and assist the school principal," Osborne said. "Then we follow our protocol (prepared plan of action) and we take care of the incident."

Big Brother Is Watching

Part of their preparation for opening day includes making sure the school's 48 cameras and its accompanying video system is working properly, Giguere said.

"You can tell when something isn't working," he said. "Each TV has 16 cameras separately working 24-7."

The system also records images from all 48 cameras and stores those recorded images for about two months. Even things that happened two months before can be recalled to view those events, such as perhaps a student being injured or a burglary or other crime.

Go With The Flow

Another function was preparing a traffic flow plan for the first week of school during the construction on Kenilworth Boulevard and the new phase of the Sebring Parkway.

They want the underclassmen (sophomores and juniors) to enter the parking lot through the furthest west gate on Kenilworth Boulevard. Seniors should enter through the gate closest to the Children's Advocacy Center on the parkway.

Freshmen are not allowed to drive to school, Giguere said.

"We ask that parents and students try to arrive at the school 15 minutes early and be patient because of traffic congestion due to the construction," Giguere said. "And be aware the school zones will be in effect (and subject to enforcement)."

Joe Seelig can be reached at (863) 386-5834 or jseelig@highlandstoday.com

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